


Peebles

by thewriterpoe



Category: SHINee
Genre: Alternate Universe, High School, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, Mention of abuse, mention of suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-04
Updated: 2017-09-04
Packaged: 2018-12-23 19:22:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11996358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thewriterpoe/pseuds/thewriterpoe
Summary: Jinki finds himself standing outside a familiar house, on a street he once saw in a dream but that seems like ages ago, like a memory from a past that isn’t his.





	Peebles

Jinki just needs someone to talk to and his friends couldn’t be bothered. Well, he calls them friends but really they’re just people to help him pass the time; help him numb the aching emptiness hollowing his chest. Plus, when you’re the guy who everyone wants to be or be with, envy not sympathy is the trading currency. But it has gotten to the point where the drugs don’t work, and mindless sex a chore and not a distraction.

He finds himself standing outside a familiar house, on a street he once saw in a dream but that seems like ages ago, like a memory from a past that isn’t his. He tries the door but it’s locked. _Why is it locked?_ It never was before. He knocks on the brass plate, the sound echoing in the still air. Somewhere, a dog barks. He knocks again but nothing stirs within.

“Stones!” he exclaims as though struck with brilliance.

Picking up pebbles from the stone flower bed, he hurls one, two, three pebbles at the top right window; successful when a light flickers on and a silhouette appears within the window frame. He smiles when Taemin sticks his head out, one eye gummed shut with sleep.

“Jinki?” His gruff whisper carries across the road. “What are -?”

“The door is locked.” He doesn’t bother to whisper.

“Go away!” Taemin hisses, cringing at how loud it sounds. He looks up and down the street to see if their noise has woken anyone up. Another dog barks or maybe the same dog.

“Open the door!” Jinki jumps up and down excitedly.

Taemin disappears from the window and for a real moment Jinki is afraid Taemin is lost to him forever. But then he hears the slide of a lock grate against its fastenings and Taemin appears at the front door draped in his Cowboy Bebop duvet. He drops the remaining pebbles where he stands and jogs over to the door, smiling broadly.

“Hi!” he says sheepishly, as though it isn’t three in the morning; as though he’s picking Taemin up for a date.

Taemin just looks at him, sleep still claiming his right eye.

Jinki laughs nervously; he always did when Taemin looked at him as though he pitied him, as though he hated him. “I was going to kill myself when I saw your house and thought…” his voice trails because he doesn’t know why he said it; maybe to get a rise out of the indifferent boy, maybe because it’s true.

Taemin exhales heavily, still just looking at him.

“Don’t you have anything to say about that?”

Taemin opens his mouth but then it closes with a huff as Jinki pushes his way into the house pointing animatedly at an object that has gotten his attention.

“I can’t believe this is still here,” Jinki laughs, picking up a Chinese ornamented vase. “Remember when we were six and we broke it running through the house and your mom was so angry with us she actually beat us with a ruler.”

Taemin, very much awake now, eyes the vase warily, as though he’s afraid it might shatter again. He walks up to Jinki, plucking the vase from his hands and placing it back on its mantel with the cracked face to the wall.

“This place hasn’t changed,” Jinki says looking around, his hand rubbing his neck. His eyes rest on Taemin's face. “You haven’t changed.” Bent forward, hands resting on his thighs, he peers into Taemin's carefully constructed vacant eyes wondering if he can finally swim in them, or just drown as he has done many times before. His face inches closer to Taemin's, nose tip to nose tip, but Taemin doesn’t flinch. Jinki would have kissed him, he should have kissed him but he gets scared and just laughs awkwardly. He’s been doing that a lot.

“Are you happy?” he asks suddenly. He doesn’t wait for the answer, just plows on. “I feel so incredibly tired and it’s a wonder because I haven’t done anything with my life. Maybe that’s why my mom says I’m useless. Dad’s having a hard time with work so he takes it out on mom and she in turn takes it out on me. Can you believe she hit me the other day? She actually slapped me. I was so shocked. She’s never done anything like that.” He looks at Taemin from the corner of his eye, hoping for a reaction. He’s told Taemin all this before; a long time ago when he didn’t need pebbles, when he could just climb through Taemin's window late at night, knees scraped, eyes red. He’d tell Taemin about his mother’s relentless ambition for him so that he doesn’t end up like his father, about how he thought she only stayed in the marriage so that he would have an example of what not to be.

Jinki takes Taemin's downward gaze as a good sign. “Of course I run away ‘cause fuck that…but I don’t really have anywhere to go now. I mean my friends are cool to let me stay but they have their own fucked up issues to deal with. You do know that’s just a nice way of saying they threw me out, right?” He pauses, waiting for the other boy to acknowledge what he has said. He takes the return of Taemin's gaze on him as acknowledgment. “I don’t even know why I’m friends with them; they’re not really nice people. This one time at a party we were playing seven minutes in heaven and I was supposed be locked in the closet with this freshman but someone thought it would be funny if we switched cause apparently the guy was in love with me and we wanted to see if he could tell the difference…” Jinki gives a short laugh, eyes glassy as the scene played behind them.

“That was me,” Taemin says, his tone even.

A rumor started that Taemin had sucked the switch's dick so that for the next year and a half Taemin was called a slut and boys made rude gestures at him with their tongues; and Jinki, his childhood friend, his first love, laughed along with the others. What was worse, Jinki stopped hanging out with him altogether after that.

Jinki startles as though he hadn’t known Taemin was there. But really it’s just been so long since he’s heard the other's voice. He tears up because it sounds like cartoons and pillow forts, ice-cream on Sundays, and stolen first kisses. It sounds like memories that aren’t his because how could a horrible person have a wonderful past? 

Embarrassed by this turn of emotion, Jinki laughs, rubbing his eyes furiously. “I don’t even know why I am here.” He sighs, looking at Taemin's hands. There’s an Iron Man bandage around the left index and he asks how the injury came about.  Taemin answers simply, ‘paper cut’. Jinki smiles bitterly, grateful for the answer but also acutely aware that Taemin is tolerating him.  

So he heads for the door, stopping at the threshold. He looks back, “Aren’t you going to come after me?” a shrill laugh burst from his lips at the ridiculous notion. Something dances in his eyes – hope? - but then dies. “It’s just that I’m in love with you and it sucks because I really fucked up.”


End file.
